Talk:Kamikaze

The Last Letter

I'm looking for "The Last Letter" by a kamikaze pilot whose name starts with an R, and has some odd letters. Benjamin (talk) 04:49, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Found it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dji_Uehara

A link to this should be added. Benjamin (talk) 04:52, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

More editing needed.

This article is somewhat garbled. For example, it seems to say in the first paragraph that a kamikaze attack was conducted during the attack on Pearl Harbor (on 7 December 1941), but in the third paragraph states, "These attacks, which began in October 1944,". You need to distinguish between a single aviator who, with his own death imminent, decided independently to make the most of his death by making a ramming attack at Pearl Harbor, versus the programs that were created for, and the operations that were designed as, ramming attacks. I think you have gotten confused by the several usages of the word kamikaze. Kabocha (talk) 14:32, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, and prior version restored. Pearl Harbor was not a kamikaze attack. Kablammo (talk) 16:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Still a muddle, partly because of combining navy and army air special attack.

Thank you for the edit, Kablammo.

This article is still badly garbled, and that is partly because Western historians/writers have not understood that "Kamikaze" (the special attack pilot/unit/tactic/program, take your pick as to what the word signifies) is basically limited to certain Japanese Navy air operations using the "special attack" tactic. It should not be applied to, and as far as knowledgeable Japanese are concerned, does not apply to Japanese Army special attack air operations.

As a general proposition, the Japanese prefer the more inclusive term "tokubetsu kōgeki" and its abbreviation, "tokkō" to the more limited term "Kamikaze". A book called Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kōgekitai, Model Art Number 458, Model Art Co., Ltd., (1995) deals exclusively with certain aerial attack missions by the Japanese Navy. It contains nothing about Japanese Army air special attacks. That publisher dealt with Japanese Army air special attacks separately.

Consequently, from the Japanese point of view, your illustration of a Japanese Army Ki-43 taking off at Chiran Air Base, which was mainly a Japanese Army installation, is incorrectly shown here. The Japanese Army air special attacks are not "kamikaze", but they do qualify as special attacks (tokubetsu kōgeki).

Which do you want to discuss in this article, a limited group of navy special attacks by air, or the broader topic of Japanese air-to-surface special attack?

I will check this site again in a week. Kabocha (talk) 00:22, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Mum vs Mom

In the Quotations section Ichizo Hayashi refers to how he "cannot help crying when [he thinks] of you, Mum". This is the British form, of course, but there is no guideline as to whether the article is in British or American English. Please correct me, of course, if this is simply how it translates. Wodgester (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I see instances of both "armor" and "armour". The first instance I find of "defence" was in 2005; there then was no use of "defense". So it looks like British (Aussie?) English was used first, but current usage is inconsistent. Kablammo (talk) 20:26, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

There is confusion in this article about what "Kamikaze" means. There is a narrow Japanese interpretation and a broad, perhaps overly broad, Western interpretation.

I am months late in returning to this subject.

I am still concerned that the first sentence of the article makes the word "kamikaze" synonymous with all manner of "special attack" and the machines, people and units that made special attacks. That is a Western perception, but not necessarily accurate. It also seems to tie the word only to the units (tai) that executed them. That would be too narrow.

Regarding "special attack" (aka tokubetsu kougeki), in forty years of reading about this, I have not found a perfect Japanese definition for "special attack" in the context of World War Two. The idea is an attack that is so bold and dangerous that it will almost certainly result in the death of the pilot, submariner, boatman, infantryman, etc. who makes that attack. The people who performed special attack missions understood in advance that they would probably be one-way missions, and for the vast majority of them, the mission was indeed fatal to the attackers.

The word "kamikaze", however, has two rather different interpretations in the context of World War Two. Westerners take it to mean various things, leaning towards any sort of special attack. However, the Japanese lexicon assigns a narrower meaning and makes it a subset of "special attack". In this view, it is a particular group of Japanese naval air operations that were special attacks that were ordered in the Fourth Quarter of 1944 and 1945. In this narrower interpretation, "kamikaze" missions were strictly naval air operations for air-to-surface attack. To describe the units that performed them, the Japanese sometimes call them "Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kougekitai" (Divine Wind Special Attack Units). The Japanese did not call the numerous one-way missions of Japanese army aircraft for air-to-surface attack "kamikaze", but did call them "special attack" (tokubetsu kougeki).

I think you need to divide this article into paragraphs explaining the two interpretations of "kamikaze" that relate to World War Two, and delete the "tai" ending in your definition, because that refers to the units. Furthermore, you may want to delete the photo of a takeoff of army planes at Chiran, Kyushu, because "kamikaze" is not a word for army special attack under the narrower Japanese interpretation used during the war.Kabocha (talk) 14:32, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

References

Recruitment

in the recruitment section it is told that there were many volunteers for pilots of these planes. However, there doesnt seem to be a good source. Both sources are not check-able and leave very little information. I highly doubt that these people were so exited (yes, excited, that is what this section describes) to die at what must have seemed to be the end of a losing war. I would like to see some better sources, at least some that i can check. There is a brief description of a modern japanese writer that is a good counterpoint, but is very short compared to what is mentioned previous to its entry. Also, it is documented a lot better. This part is very one-sided, and seems to be the case of someone injecting a political or social agenda into this article. This type of thing is cancer to this website. MORE SOURCES for this description of highly unusual behavior. (this aspect of kamikaze bombing is, to me, the most interesting part about it. I am disappointed there is not more information.)